We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Are IITs the only best places for Tech education?

Indians boast of IITs as being the cream institutions of their country. Well, that is true, but here is a new angle of looking at the same story.

Except for the few IITs like say till some years ago 7 IITs and now 15 IITs, the rest of the educational institutes in India were privately owned. Engineering college privatization started from the state of Karnataka, where ministers started launching opening colleges as they saw a huge opportunity in minting money from this path. Family bound Indian parents were always interested in making a best future for their kids education wise and a country where there is dearth of opportunities. So hundreds of colleges were born with total disregard to quality and so the engineering dream of Indian kids started. And soon it flowed to other states, like Maharashtra, where politicians took no time on establishing their own private colleges. Engineering colleges were soon converted to deemed universities and under a single campus, one could get education starting from junior K.G to advanced engineering degrees, management degrees, medical degrees. Quality was never a criteria because when you have so much of a demand, any thing sells. That is the basic law of economics and it was aptly at work in India.

Only IIT's boasted qualified faculty such as PhDs. The rest of the faculty as one can guess did not have enough qualification to teach, but since India never believed in PhDs, all these faculty was accepted with its low standards. With the advent of IT and outsourcing from 2001 year onwards, India started witnessing Software outsourcing wave, where people started getting paid in handsome amount as compared to the rest of the working class in India and soon rush to outsourcing based jobs started. Point to be noted is, in this rush, Computer Engineering faculty's standard and quality got degraded to new worst levels, as people never turned up to college teacher jobs as salary's offered there were pathetically low as compared to the prestige, infrastructure and status offered by a software job.

So now we are in a state in present India, where IIT's are considered cream institutes and the rest of them are so pathetic that one can not even compare them with IITs. Well, IITs too have downgraded in their quality over a period of time because of Indian conditions such as corruption etc, but atleast one has a guarantee that the teacher teaching there is a qualified PhD. PhD degrees sell in India for few thousand Rs. So I do not ever consider validity of a PhD degree, unless it is obtained from IISC, few IITs and couple of other so called premier institutes.

That raises the question. Is cream status of IIT justifiable? When government fails to create quality education for masses, is it valid to call a few institutes which it created (Indias first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru created IITs and IIMs) as its cream? Isn't it hypocrisy, that you do not raise standard for others, ignore the mass destruction of quality, and keep on boasting about the few institutes which were created some decades ago, as your cream? Is it not a crime to fail to create good institutes in 3,4 decades and deprive millions of young Indians quality education that they deserve, rather than keeping the vested interest of their own in mind while creating new private institutes for churning out money as people have no options. Is it justifiable to boast about the IIT JEE exam being toughest and only brightest being able to crack it? Does it indicate that the rest who failed it, were dumb and deserve to study in such pathetic conditions that their careers could get jeopardized?

Whenever I think of these questions. I feel a deep unrest about the so called hypocritical Indian behavior, which I keep on observing every day around me. Indians take a huge pride in self boasting, when in reality they do not at all understand, how they lack so many things.

IITs, I do not consider you as cream institutes, because you are given that status, because of vested interests of our politicians. I believe that is the reality.The way Indian government totally ignores quality of education for masses in India and lacks any vision of any sort in making this country self sufficient in technology, education and research makes me wonder, why thousands of those students who migrate to developed countries to seek higher education, are not a mere reflection of the sad Indian society, who really is not interested in real quality education. Because I do not understand how these people do not feel a strong desire to change the way things work back in their country, because their kids, will have to suffer the same trauma again in some years. Or is it the case that the Indian society has lost its thinking abilities under constant glittering value of sudden flow of money in their lives?

Do not know. But the whole scenario is extremely depressing. Government plays with future and careers of millions of deserving kids, who realize the things they have lost, once they are prime their innocent days and then they really can not do anything, except develop new found expectations from their own kids to fulfill.

2 comments:

You are absolutely correct....the quality of education that is provided outside India, is not comparable with that of foreign Universities. On the other hand, the Study Structure in IITs is too Conventional! No one talks of new ideas, there is simply a unreasonable amount of competition to be faced.And people call these Butcher Shops, Cream?Are you freaking kidding me?

Indian mentality for sure is to blame. Notice how our syllabus doesn’t change as per time. Politicians have a say in deciding that too; what should be included & what not. Have you noticed how expensive education has become now? Private schools make lacs of rupees per child starting from KG admission. There is no law taking care of it. There are no guidelines for fee structure and limits. Only the rich can afford such school that apparently are the best. Education sells in India like crazy. In a gigantic populated country like India, it’s very true to say survival of the fittest. Everyone is in a race to go ahead. In such a situation who will care for quality. And easy money has gone to everybody's heads. Effortless income has deteriorated the system to even worse mentality now. I don’t think the Indian crowd deserves all the technology and luxury that is in the market! Everyone just wants to display their wealth.

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Hi. I am a PhD student at Centrum Wiskunde Informatica (CWI), Amsterdam.
I was a master's student at Jack Baskin School of Engineering, in Computer Science department, at University of California, Santa Cruz, USA.
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